


Star Wars: Dead Man’s Hand

by SoelleKhiss



Category: Star Wars
Genre: Adventure, Bounty Hunters, Dark Jedi - Freeform, F/M, Fanfiction, Gen, Hoth, Lightsaber, MMO, RPG, Rebel Alliance, Revenge, SWG, Sith, Star Wars Fanfiction, Star Wars Galaxies - Freeform, Star Wars References, dark side, force abilities, smugglers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 06:56:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18338465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoelleKhiss/pseuds/SoelleKhiss
Summary: An Imperial strike team finds themselves stranded on the inhospitable planet of Hoth during an ice storm. At the mercy of the elements and hunted by Alliance soldiers, they gamble with the dark side in hopes of a winning hand and a chance at survival.(Written for the WattPad Star Wars Smackdown: Round Winner. The story is the sequel to Star Wars: Suicidal Queen.)





	Star Wars: Dead Man’s Hand

# 

Standing defiantly in the malevolent surge of energy, he reveled in the chaos of the maelstrom. The darkness shrieked and lashed at him like a malignant typhoon. It flayed his skin, drove the breath from his lungs, deafened and blinded him with its torrential magnificence. This was the power of the dark side of the Force.

Yes, there was pain. A great deal of it. What better way to remind a man that he was alive, that he existed, than by elevating his mind through fear to give purpose to the body. Daemen Irath embraced that darkness, in all its majesty, its cruelty, and its glory, for he was a Sith.

Head pounding, he awoke to a faint shrieking of a different, but no less malevolent, kind. The agonizing pressure behind his eyes forced a resurgence of recent memories. Having lost a contest of prowess with an Alliance combat carrier, he managed to escape into the upper atmosphere of Hoth. Despite warnings of the storm ravaging the planet, he descended directly into the worst of it. 

As a former TIE pilot, he had flown missions in challenging storms before, but none so relentless as the merciless storm shrouds of Hoth. With its retractable wings frozen in place and ionized controls, the Lambda-class Imperial shuttle stood little chance. The last image Daemen remembered was the shuttle’s viewport as his face accelerated into the reinforced glass.

“Soelle!” 

Soaked with sweat, Daemen sat bolt upright, a decision he regretted. Blood surged into his head, threatening to split his skull. Nearly losing consciousness, he fell backwards where he laid, but she caught him in her arms, gently laying his head back down on a makeshift pillow.

“You shouldn’t move around just yet. You’ve been unconscious for three hours,” Soelle whispered. He felt her dabbing at his face with a soft cloth. “I was beginning to worry.”

Daemen groaned, taking solace in the darkness behind his closed lids. He reached out for her, and she took his hand. “You’re shivering. Are you hurt?” he asked, opening his eyes. The cushion beneath his head was her winter parka.

“Better than you,” she replied.

He rolled his head to the side and listened as the winds of Hoth buffeted the ship’s battered hull. Pressing a hand against the interior wall, he sat up with her help. The metal beneath his fingers was ice cold, enough to raise bumps on his skin, even beneath three layers of cold-weather gear. “Guess I should have listened to Gomi when he was giving that weather report. What’s our status?”

“Winds are clocking at 150 kilometers per hour with 50 kilometer wind shears. We won’t discuss the wind chill.” Soelle caressed his cheeks and head horns with the back of her fingers, looking for signs of fever. “Main engines are dead. Life support is failing. Environmental controls failed about an hour ago.” She shivered, teeth chattering, as the cold circulated through the stale air around them.

Daemen cradled his forehead in his hand, resting his elbows on his thighs. “And yet, you’re still smiling.”

“Being on the run, outnumbered, under fire, with the odds all against me? That’s normal. Being with you? That’s what matters.”

Unfolding the parka, he draped it over her shoulders. “I’m going to get you out of this. Both of you.” 

She was two-months pregnant, and despite all of his objections, the wily basebuster had forced her way onto the mission. Daemen had not protested too strongly because he enjoyed her company. For better or worse, she was his anchor in the maelstrom, allowing him to delve ever deeper into the darkness. Her presence was his conduit back. 

“He’s awake!” Avari cried from the flight corridor leading to the cockpit. “About time, Daemen. Napping while the rest of us figure out how to save our choobies. No thanks to you. Again.”

Keets grabbed the Zabrak by his brown hair and yanked him back into the narrow hallway. “Get to your post.” With a stern expression on his face, the older Sith, a Human man, glared at Daemen. “You’ve done us in this time.” The accusation was palpable.

“Options?” Daemen asked.

“Stay put and freeze to death,” Soelle replied, “or make our way to an abandoned Rebel base nearby. Sensors indicated it’s empty, but the power cells in the thermal generators are still viable.“

“How far away is it?”

Soelle stared at the floor. “Ten kilometers.”

“In this storm! It might as well be 100 kilometers!” Keets shouted. “Even Sith would have trouble making it without succumbing to the cold. And Alliance troops are on the way.”

“Rebels!” Daemen sat up straighter. “How did they track us?” 

“A blind man could have followed that ion trail and the bits of debris flying off this shuttle. You’ve signed our death warrants by fleeing into the storm!”

Reaching for the lightsaber at his belt, Daemen stood up to confront him, but faltered. As the entire compartment swayed unsteadily, he grabbed an overhead compartment to balance himself, knees nearly buckling.

“This isn’t the time,” Nuru said. Hands gripping the hardened collar of his red Mandalorian armor, he cleared his throat to dispel the tension. “Gomi was able to track the Rebels before the worst of the storm moved in. Best guess is that they are about twenty clicks behind us, but they’re mobile.” He glanced around the damaged shuttle. “We’re not.”

“So why hasn’t Gomi made an emergency landing to pick us up?” Daemen demanded.

“Comms died right after the environmental controls,” Nuru replied. “Even if we could call for help, he couldn’t land in this weather.”

“We’re stuck,” Avari said, his lower lip pouting. He stared over Keets’ shoulder and grinned mischievously. “Unless we go with Soelle’s idea.” 

“We’ve no time for childish antics,” Keets said, glaring at him and then Soelle. His gaze softened. “This is not Socorro, Soelle.”

She bowed respectfully. “No, it is not, Master Keets, but Hoth is an extreme world, like Socorro. No more or less savage. I’d rather take my chances with a childish antic before walking ten kilometers in sub-freezing temperatures during an ice storm.”

It was rare for Soelle to disagree with a superior, and certainly not Sith. Daemen felt the flicker of a smile in the corners of his mouth. “What do you have in mind?”

Soelle went to the back of the compartment and tugged at a silky bundle of cloth filling the entire rear hatch. “In case of a crash landing, three chutes are programmed to deploy from the rear of Imperial shuttles. Fortunately, the emergency systems were fried before we crashed.”

“How is that fortunate?” Daemen asked, thinking the chutes might have spared the shuttle from the worst of the damage.

“Because we can use these chutes as kites to harness the wind and drive ourselves in the direction of that base.” She listened to the howling gale outside for a moment. “We should be able to outpace the Rebels, at least long enough to prepare a warm welcome.”

Though naive at times, the Imperial basebuster was practical and efficient. Daemen locked eyes with Keets, overtly defying him. “It was a mistake to doubt her,” he said. “What do you need?”

“A pilot to manually operate the flight mechanisms or what’s left of them. The wind will do the rest.” Soelle winked at him and then spoke into her comlink. “Pit-Pit, status report.”

The response came in a series of high-pitched whistles from Soelle’s astromech, R2-B1. Its communications were punctuated with a staccato—pit-pit-pit—as it frantically relayed the requested information. A damaged air compressor that resisted even the most extensive repair gave rise to its unusual, but appropriate nickname.

“Get yourself on the nose of the shuttle and lockdown. I’ll be right there.” 

“What’s he doing outside? In this?” Daemen asked.

“I sent him to weld reinforcement joints in the landing struts. If one of them retracts or buckles, we’re in trouble. Master Avari? Nuru? Grab your chutes.”

“Wait?” Daemen protested. “ _You’re_ going out there with them? How will you get back inside the shuttle?”

“There won’t be a safe way back. Not until we get to the base.” Gathering the gossamer fabric of the chute under her arms, she pulled the hood over her head and fit goggles across her face to limit exposure to the elements. 

“Soelle, are you sure about this?”

“It’s a straight shot to the base,” she replied. “Pit-Pit downloaded the course with possible land variations. It’s simple. Chute team, we’re up.”

“Be careful out there. All of you.”

“Copy that,” Nuru replied, securing his helmet.

“Let’s dance!” Avari shouted. His words were stolen by the wind as Keets’ pried open the door.

Daemen grit his teeth as the blast of frigid air assailed him and took his breath away. Any objects not sealed to the wall or floor were thrown about in the savage gale. As their companions hurried into the storm, the temperatures inside the shuttle plummeted. Only with assistance from Keets and Leshaa, his padawan, did Daemen manage to pull the ramp closed again. He stood beside it, panting, his breath coiling above his head. It took a few minutes for the meager warmth of the shuttle to once more circulate in the cabin.

“She’s got heart,” Leshaa said. The Twi’lek’s black skin glistened in the dim lighting. Covered in blue stripes, her lekku moved, almost imperceptibly over her shoulders. In her native language, the name meant broken, and like most broken things, she had chosen the path of a Sith, a choice Daemen deeply respected.

As he hurried to the cockpit, Daemen noticed it was remarkably colder than the rear compartment. A hairline crack ran the vertical length of the transparisteel canopy. The wind outside was strong enough to push through a web of finer fissures in the glass, producing a high-pitched whistle in the cabin. Beyond the cracked screen, Daemen could see that they had crashed landed in a ships’ graveyard. 

Like the canines of some long dead beast of ancient myth, the wreckage of Y-wing and X-wing fighters jutted from the snowy ground where they had crashed, a grim reminder of the battle fought for the dominance of the planet. Any scorch marks or carbon scoring had long been bleached away by time and Hoth’s relentless winds. Providing shelter from the elements, the massive wreckage of a Hammer-class Cruiser kept the fighters from being completely buried and stood sentinel over the dead.

“Internal comm’s check,” Daemen said, watching as his companions scrambled across the icy nose of the shuttle.

“Nuru, here,” the bounty hunter replied, his voice filtered from the wind via his helmet.

“Tuskan cabbage,” Avari said. “Can you smell me?”

When no response came from Soelle, Daemen’s heart quickened. She stood in the center beside her R2 unit, but was having trouble balancing on the ice. “Soelle?”

“Check,” she said, her voice strained. “Everyone, strap in before you secure your lines. This is going to be a little bumpy.”

“Maglocks on,” Nuru said. “Avari, stop playing around and strap in. If you come off, there’s no rescue party.”

“But I like parties.” Avari chuckled, strapping himself to a rung beside Soelle. 

“I’ll deploy first,” she said. “Be ready. That will be the worst part. Then on my mark, the two of you deploy at the same time. Otherwise, one of the side kites might roll us.” 

Soelle rocked back and forth on her heels and tossed her chute into the wind. The shrieking gales of Hoth assailed the makeshift kite. With a violent popping that was audible even inside the cockpit, the chute snapped open, and the shuttle lurched forward. Beneath them, the landing struts creaked in protest as they slowly slid across the snowy surface.

“Mark!” she screamed above the storm, holding onto Pit-Pit for balance.

The second and third chutes abruptly blossomed in the storm winds, pulling the attached cables taut across the damaged bow. Partially lightened by the drift, the disabled shuttle veered erratically from where it had crashed and accelerated into the night, propelled on those shearing winds.

“It’s working!” Soelle shouted.

Pit-Pit uttered a series of high-pitched warbles and whistles, punctuating his words with a few deep notes.

“What’s he going on about?” Nuru asked.

“Life readings? Ahead of us?” 

Avari grunted and wrapped his hands in the cable to control his chute. “Rebs?”

“No,” Soelle replied. “Something native. I don’t understand what he’s saying.”

At the mercy of the wind, the shuttle skidded forward, picking up speed. Daemen activated the landing lights, but in the ferocity of the storm, the illumination did little more than intensify the whiteout conditions.

Locked to the hull by the maglocks in his combat boots, Nuru reached for his LD-1 blaster rifle. “Tell me I’m hallucinating,” he said, indicating the massive, white figure loping toward them from the arctic blast.

“An ugly, white Wookiee!” Avari grunted in pain when the creature reached up as the shuttle sped by and grabbed his ankle. “Oh look, he wants to play.”

“That’s no Wookiee, you idiot! It’s a Wampa!” Nuru said. “Blast it!”

“Can’t get a clear shot,” Soelle said. “Avari, do something!”

“You’re playing a little too rough for our first time!” Avari said, kicking the Wampa in the face while holding onto his chute cable. He snatched the lightsaber from his belt, ignited the crimson blade, and severed the creature’s hand at the wrist with a wild swing.

Still smoking, the dismembered limb landed on the nose of the shuttle. In its death throes, it grabbed onto Soelle’s boot. “ _Inysi_!” she swore in Socorran.

Extending a metallic pincer, Pit-Pit sent a surge of electricity into the appendage. In the aftermath of the shock, the dead fingers opened reflexively. The droid then seized the closest finger and threw hand into the wind.

“That was close,” Soelle said.

“Too close,” Nuru replied. “They’re generally solitary creatures. Let’s not stick around to find out.”

“How fast are we going?” Soelle’s voice was muffled and came in intermittent syllables. 

“The instrumentation is built for flying,” Daemen said, “not land travel.” 

Leshaa listened to a steady stream of whistling from the droid and read the interpretation from the control screen. “Pit-Pit says we’re moving about 50kph now and accelerating.”

Keets crossed his hands over his chest, showing the faint semblance of a smile. “I stand corrected. Soelle may have delivered us from this disaster after all.”

“At this rate, we’ll be at that base in less than an hour,” Leshaa said.

There was no celebration, no shouts of joy inside the shuttle or outside where the three members of their strike team weathered the storm and its blistering winds. _How long can they last out there?_ Daemen wondered. _Soelle_? He bit his lip to keep from uttering her name. 

“Any idea how we’re going to stop this thing when get to the base?” Keets asked.

Still holding onto the cables of the chute as if they were the reins of a bolting bantha, Soelle chuckled into the comlink. “Hadn’t thought that far ahead, Master Keets. I’m open to any suggestions.”

# # # #

Within the fortified walls of the abandoned Rebel base, Daemen could still hear the shrieking of Hoth’s winds as the storm raged on without reprieve. Severely compromised by the ravages of time and war, the massive complex was more a tomb than a shelter. Though it was 30 degrees warmer inside the base, the cold was biting and dangerous.

Lying on the floor in an abandoned security room in front of a small heating unit that Nuru had salvaged from the shuttle, Soelle shivered against Daemen’s chest. Huddled beneath an emergency blanket, Daemen laid behind her, holding her in his arms to provide some warmth. The ride to the base had taken a devastating toll, and despite her resilience, she suffered. 

“I’ve got to stop being so reckless,” he whispered in her ear.

“That recklessness makes you who you are, _Master_ Daemen,” she replied through chattering teeth. 

She almost never referred to him as master anymore, and did so only to make a point of jest. “I have other things to think about now.” Daemen lowered his hand to her belly. She placed her gloved hand over his and drew in a deep, almost convulsive breath. The fatigue from constant shivering had drained her. With some effort to move her heavy, frozen limbs, she rolled over and curled herself against him, folding her arms and hands against his chest.

“Avari did say he’d join us. I can call him, if you like.” Daemen laughed as she cuffed him playfully beneath the chin.

“Was that an invitation?” Avari gasp from the doorway. He cartwheeled into the room, landed in a heap, and slid across the floor, trapping Soelle between his body and Daemen. “I’ll keep you warm, Soelley!”

“Avari?” Daemen said, a severity in his voice. “If the Rebels don’t kill you, I will. Get away from her.”

“Just kidding!” Avari quickly stood up and hopped onto the command terminal behind him. “Speaking of Rebels, they sent us a little gift.” He tossed the burned out wreck of a seeker droid to Soelle.

“Where did you find this?” she asked, removing her gloves to inspect the tracking bot.

“Nuru blew it up when it tried to sneak in through a hole in the blast doors,” he replied. “It has a message, but we can’t read it. Too much damage. Was hoping you could fix it, Soelley.”

“Where’s the R2 unit? It should be able to download the message,” Daemen said.

“Pit-Pit’s busy keeping the thermal generators from blowing us up or slowly killing us with Narvascan gas,” Soelle replied. Hands trembling, she struggled to steady her fingers long enough to rewire the necessary components. A green light flashed once, then twice, and then three times before remaining active.

“Oh, the weather outside is frightful,” sang a familiar voice from the droid, “but your bounty’s so delightful. I intend to collect, so you know...blood in the snow, blood in the snow, blood in the snow.”

“Dola-Brun,” Daemen said with such malice that his eye twitched. 

He got to his feet without another word, leaving Soelle on the floor beneath the thermal blanket. With measured steps, the Sith hurried back to the abandoned base’s docking arena and paced the length of the blast doors like a caged animal. 

Across the known galaxy, there was a proud and prolific history of the hunt, near mythic tales written on the subject of Sith versus Bounty Hunter and the outcomes of those conflicts. However, the fierce rivalry between Daemen and Dola-Brun was legendary and required its own chapter. 

The tracer’s first clumsy attempt to claim the bounty on Daemen’s head ended in a humiliating defeat with the quarry bringing down the hunter. To celebrate that victory, Daemen spared his life, but had scarred him with a lightsaber to remind Dola about the consequences of failure. Despite this, Dola-Brun proved tenacious and kept coming back, defeat after defeat. _Scar after scar._

When killing Daemen proved futile, Dola turned to hunting the less experienced Sith in his guild. The bounty hunter murdered them slowly through torture, recording the events and displaying them on hacked Imperial HoloNet channels. The Rebel’s insolence knew no boundaries. 

“What’s eating him?” Nuru asked. 

“Bounty hunters,” Soelle said, handing the blasted seeker droid to him. “That’s how they tracked us. Dola-Brun must have picked up Daemen’s contract.”

“Dola!”

“And he’s not alone.” Daemen pressed his hands against the blast door, penetrating the chaos of the storm with his enhanced senses. When a bounty hunter could not get the job done alone, he fell in with a pack. “Herne and Arkana are with him.”

“An old fashion ganking?” Nuru shook his head and shrugged. “Can’t say I blame them. The contracts on our heads are worth at least six million credits, especially after that last stunt we pulled over Tatooine.”

Taking a deep breath, Daemen stepped away from the door. “They only good Rebel is a dead one. We’ll kill them all.”

Keets grabbed him by the shoulders and swung Daemen around to to glare at him. “We are outnumbered six to one. This cannot be one man’s fight. There’s too much at stake.” He looked at Soelle, who stood behind them with the emergency blanket draped about her shoulders.

“This is the _Rambling Rover_ ,” said a familiar voice, crackling over the comm. “Anyone alive down there?” 

“Finally, Gomi!” Soelle gasped. “Yes, we’re alive, though half frozen. We need immediate evac. The Rebels you detected are on their way.”

“No can do, darling,” the smuggler replied. “I’m barely getting a comm signal through that storm. Any attempt to reach you now, and we’ll _all_ be stranded. And if the cold didn’t kill us, the Rebs surely will.” 

“So what’s the _good_ news?” Daemen asked. 

“There’s a break coming in the storm. Two hours from now. I can make an emergency landing, evac your team, and dust off without spilling a drop of my Corellian whiskey.”

“Two hours!” Nuru hissed. “The Rebels will be all over us by then. They’re using bounty hunters to track our Sith.”

“Clever move. Those seeker droids sniff out DNA and vital signs,” Gomi said. “So long as they’re still breathing, the target will stick out like a lovesick rancor waking up from a wet dream.”

Silence met the smuggler’s colorful euphemism as no one quite knew how to respond.

“Uhm, no,” Avari said, shaking his head in disgust, “I don’t even want to think about that right now.” 

“What if we mask our life readings?” Leshaa said, looking to Keets pensively. “If we could get the jump on them, we could even the odds.”

“Explain yourself,” Keets said.

“Sith have the ability to hibernate—to render the body and mind still—to the point of death, needing no food, water, not even air.”

“What do you expect Soelle and me to do?” Nuru asked. “Hold our breath and hope for the best?”

Leshaa stared at him before breaking her guarded silence. “It is possible to put others in the trance.”

“You’re talking about a dead man’s hand,” Soelle whispered. “There’s a legend about a bounty hunter, Fenn Rizaar, and his mark. They decided to play a Sabacc round before settling their business. Fenn had five cards in his hand. Four of them totaling 23–a winning hand. But he was shot dead before the fifth card could be revealed.”

“We don’t have time for smuggler tall tales,” Nuru grumbled.

“The plan’s simple, Nuru. Using the hibernation trick, we all play dead. Lure them in. Spring the trap.”

“ _No_!” The frames supporting the blast doors buckled slightly under the weight of Daemen’s utterance. A wispy, black miasma rose from the weakened metal as the dark side of the Force manifested itself physically outside of his thoughts. “I don’t know what hibernation will do to you. _Or the baby._ ”

“You must know the risks, Soelle and weigh them carefully,” Keets said. “Hibernation is no mean feat, even among Jedi. I’ve _never_ seen it done on anyone outside of the order, light or dark.”

“We already know the outcome if we _don’t_ try.” Soelle squeezed Daemen’s arm through the thick layers and forced the Sith to look into her eyes.

“I don’t like it,” Nuru said with a resigned sigh, “but I don’t see any other options. You led us this far. What’s the plan, Soelle?”

She brought up a holographic schematic of the ruined base on her datapad and expanded it. “We could fortify these access points.”

“We’ll never have time to secure them all,” Avari said. “Even using lightbsabers to weld the blast doors together.”

“Don’t have to finish. Just need to make it look like we tried before we gave up and fell back here.” She pointed to a small annex in the center of the base.

“An old maintenance supply closet? Is that where we make our last stand?” Nuru shrugged his armored shoulders. 

“How do we make that look right?” Avari asked, scratching his head. “One minute we’re alive, and the next we’re not? Dola is a Tuskan cabbage head, but he isn’t _that_ stupid.”

“Pit-Pit can release trace amounts of Narvascan from the thermal generators into this room.”

“Narvascan is toxic, Soelle.” Daemen glared down at her.

“Only with prolonged exposure. A few hours shouldn't be a problematic.”

Daemen closed his eyes and shook his head. “Avari’s right. Dola’s no fool. As much as I hate to admit that. He’s not going to fall for this.”

Soelle smiled at him, disarming any further protest. “Dola-Brun is a bit nearsighted when he sets his mind to a task, especially if that task is _you_. He doesn’t have to believe for long. By then, the trap will have spun, and the Rebels will be in it. Too late to escape.”

“What if he finds your bodies and decides to take a shot at you out of spite. I wouldn’t put it passed him.” Daemen kicked at the floor. “There’s no code of ethics for bounty hunters. No quarter will be given.”

“And none shall be asked,” she countered

Keets crossed his arms over his chest. “Leshaa will stay here with Soelle and Nuru. Her lightsaber will even the odds. The rest of us can take positions in the ventilation shafts above the corridors in order to flank the Rebels. We’ll drop on them and rain down a terror as they have never seen. Regardless of their numbers.”

Brushing the stubble on his chin, Nuru sighed loudly, heavily, a prolonged gesture of frustration and, Daemen could sense, fear. “Let’s get this over with before I change my fool mind. Keets will you do the honors?” he said, tucking his helmet beneath his arm. “Sorry, Leshaa, seen you handle yourself with a lightsaber, but you’re still a rookie.”

“Why not me?” Avari complained. “I can do it, too.”

“Last thing I want is you turning cartwheels in my head, Avari. Or worse! Running around in your skivvies trying to tea-bag me. Back off.”

Daemen faltered with indecision. If there was one person in the galaxy that Dola-Brun wanted dead, besides him, it was Soelle. The bounty hunter had to know that she would be among them as a potential prize. The danger was apparent, for all of them, but the greater peril was reserved for her and Nuru, who would be helpless until brought back from the brink.

“Daemen,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his waist.

“Nuru’s right.” Resigned to their fate, he took her by the hand. “Let’s get this over with before I change _my_ mind.”

# # # #

Peace was a fallacy taught by a dying order who sought dominion through their doctrine of obeisance. Daemen would have embraced death before blind obedience to the Jedi, whose hubris brought about their near extinction. The natural order of the Force represented chaos. Natural selection brought forth the strongest through violence. Endurance belonged only to those who could withstand the agony. The maelstrom represented birth, and none were more adept at being reborn in this image than the Sith. 

_Soelle_? 

The Dark Side beckoned with its passion, its pain, and its power. But beneath the glory of it, he could still feel the warmth of her forehead against his, breathing in her breath, as he willed her into a lifeless stupor. It was not so much that he was lulling her to sleep, but stealing the essence of her life and the life of their unborn child. 

_My son—Raeth_. 

While in the trance, the guilt of the act weighed heavily on his mind and churned the maelstrom into a frenzy that made it difficult to maintain control. In images painted in black and white, Daemen could see Soelle through the veil of shadows. She laid sprawled on the floor beside Leshaa, victims of the deadly gas venting from the thermal generators below the base. Nuru laid just behind them with his hand over the trigger housing of his LD-1 blaster rifle. 

Pit-Pit stood among the living corpses like a gravestone, a grim accessory to the ruse that was far too real. On the periphery of consciousness, Daemen sensed a disturbance.

“Well, well,” Dola-Brun said. Flanked by Rebel commandos, he cautiously sauntered into the maintenance closet, grinning like a predator shows its fangs before leaping on its prey. Dressed in his trademark brown Ubese armor, he took off the helmet and stared down at the bodies. With his DL-44 heavy blaster in hand, he knelt down and gripped the toe of Soelle’s boot, rolling her foot back and forth. “Not even stiff yet.”

“Trace amounts of Narvascan in the air,” the officer beside him said. “Looks like they fell back here to make a last stand and the gas got them.”

“Where are the others?” Dola sneered.

“No life signs within 50 kilometers of the base, sir. Maybe they fled.”

“Earning a seven-figure bounty should bring a man some small sense of satisfaction,” Dola whispered, disappointed. He aimed the blaster at Soelle’s chest. “I feel cheated.”

Daemen stirred in the ceiling tiles above the room, but he had gone too deeply into the maelstrom to harness the darkest energies of the Force. The dark side rebuked him, burning his flesh and flaying his skin as he fought to break free of the trance. Below him in the maintenance closet, Leshaa sprang to life, igniting her lightsaber and swinging wildly for Dola-Brun’s throat. The bounty hunter was no amateur and effortlessly dodged her. 

“It’s a trap—” the Rebel officer screamed. The lightsaber sliced through his armor, cutting off his words as it sliced through his throat.

Pistol-whipping the Twi’lek, Dola-Brun knocked her to the floor. “Normally I’d throw you back in the water, darling. You’re just not big enough,” he said, aiming the blaster at her face. “But a paycheck is a paycheck.” 

Awakening from the trance, Nuru struggled to shake the fog from his head. He leveled his blaster rifle to get a shot off, but Dola fired first. The bolt burned through the heavy armor of the Mandalorian chestplate. Nuru cried out in pain as the impact knocked him back to the floor beside Leshaa. Once more, the Rebel bounty hunter turned his blaster toward Soelle’s still form.

Ripping himself from the maelstrom, layers of sanity stripped from his mind, Daemen cut a wide swatch through the ventilation grating. As molten bits of steel rained down around him, he grinned malevolently and cut down three Rebel soldiers with his lightsaber. The corridor reverberated with the startled screams of Rebel troopers and the fierce vibration of Sith lightsabers as Avari and Keets dropped down from their hiding places in ceiling.

With a smirk on his face, Dola-Brun took aim at Daemen and fired. The Sith deflected the bolt, deftly spinning the lightsaber over the back of his hand. Dodging a ricochet meant for his head, Dola-Brun sidestepped a savage vertical sweep meant to cut him from groin to gullet. He fell back into the corridor, using his men as human shields. 

“Same ole tactics, eh Dola?” Daemen asked with a sneer. “Strategic retreat?”

“Not this time, Daemen.” Dola-Brun tossed a metallic object into the corridor. “Fire in the hole!”

Daemen leaped backwards. Holding his lightsaber in the en garde position, he threw a hand up to protect his face. 

The resulting explosion was deafening, redoubled by the close confines, but the sound of the blast was a small discomfort compared to the thousand pinpricks of lightning that followed the discharge. The stun grenade was designed to overload the nervous system and disable its victims by causing debilitating muscle convulsions and then paralysis. 

A barrage of electrical current enveloped Daemen in a sheath of energy that would have dropped a lesser Sith. He used the lightsaber to parry and deflect the majority of the destructive blast, but lost all feeling in his hands and legs. When his vision cleared, he feared that the bounty hunter had eluded him with his cheap trickery and sprinted after him into an adjoining corridor.

“Daemen,” Keets called over the comm. “Where are you?”

“Are the Rebels down?” he replied, cautiously working his way into a partially collapsed hallway.

“Yes.”

“Then why are you bothering me? I’m hunting.”

“Soelle didn’t wake up. We can’t revive her.”

Daemen faltered in midstride, only momentarily, and then gritting his teeth, he continued into the access tunnel, drawn by the pungent scent of carbon scoring from the muzzle of Dola-Brun’s blaster. The DL-44 was a relic, but it had become the weapon of choice for killing Sith and other Imperial sympathizers. Daemen intended to collect it as a trophy along with the tracer’s head.

Running headlong into a natural-rock tunnel near the hangar, he narrowly managed to deflect two bolts from the heavy blaster. A third round struck him in the ankle. While Daemen recovered, Dola wasted no time darting down another section of corridor. “He’s heading back to the hangar.”

“Daemen!” Keets shouted. “Did you not hear me? Soelle did not wake up. She’s not breathing.”

Heart racing from the chase and an impending kill, it now raced for another reason. He felt a tightness in his chest that made it difficult to breathe. But his thoughts quickly turned from Soelle and back to the hunt. The battle with Dola-Brun was a personal one, and he intended to finish it. 

_Soelle would understand that._

Ahead of him, Daemen heard the telling hiss of a lightsaber and a startled cry of pain. It was Dola’s voice in distress. There was no mistaking it. Fearing Avari or Keets had robbed him of his prize, Daemen sprinted toward the fight.

An exceptionally nimble shadow darted across his peripheral vision. Daemen leaped to follow it, lightsaber in hand as he summoned the dark side to aide him, enhancing all of his senses and honing his body for battle. As he gave chase into the ruins of the docking bay, he heard what came to his ears as a child’s playful laughter. It echoed in the darkness. He pursued it to an access corridor where a dark figure stood in the shadows, patiently waiting for him by a dilapidated maintenance elevator.

In no mood for idle talk, Daemen threw his lightsaber with the intention to kill. The lightsaber’s crimson blade disengaged, repelled by the darkness. With a clatter that echoed in the quiet junction, the polished cylinder fell to the floor.

The malignancy of the dark side was so potent here that it was palpable. Daemen felt the intoxication as it seeped into his pores. “You’re not Dola-Brun.”

“No,” said a soft voice. “I’m not. But he _was_ here.”

The fallen lightsaber levitated in the air and hovered, slowly spinning in the space between them. Igniting from the hilt, the crimson blade cast a faint light on the stranger in the lift. He was tall and muscular though not fully filled out, bare chested, and wearing only a black _rijani_ fighting skirt.

Daemen recognized the familiar silhouette but could not bring him to believe his own eyes. “Who are you?”

“A messenger.”

“And the message?”

“Sometimes you never fully learn to appreciate what you’ve got until you lose it. Good talking to you, _ulm_.” The apparition vanished and with it the malignant darkness. 

Summoning the lightsaber to his hand, Daemen hurried to the lift. He found the corpses of Herne and Arkana. The bounty hunters had been gutted and left for dead. There was no sign of Dola-Brun, except for his DL-44 blaster, which was laying on the floor cut in half. A closer examination of the bodies and the gun revealed the damage had been done by a lightsaber. But whose? He was alone in the darkness. 

_Sometimes you never fully learn to appreciate what you’ve got until you lose it._

“Soelle?” He sprinted back to the maintenance closet.

# # # #

The corridor was rancid with the scent of blood intermingling with the stench of scorched flesh. Daemen hurried through the carnage, stepping over the bodies of fallen Rebel soldiers. He rushed through the doorway to find Nuru sitting at a terminal. His breastplate was off, torso exposed, while Leshaa tended to the blackened burn across his chest. 

Pit-Pit shifted from side to side, uttering a series of concerted, low-toned warbles to Avari, who was kneeling over Soelle’s body. She was in the exact position where Daemen had lain her after placing her in hibernation. 

“Get down here, Gomi, soon as you can,” Keets was saying. “We’ve got wounded. And Soelle ... she’s down.” 

“Copy that,” the Corellian replied over the comms. “I’m coming in now. ETA 10 minutes. I’ve got the doc with me. Hang on down there.”

Dropping to one knee beside her, Daemen threw the remains of Dola-Brun’s blaster to the floor. He laid his hand against her cheek and found the flesh was cold. She looked peaceful as every corpse did at its funeral. “Soelle?” When she did not respond, he cradled her in his arms and shook her. “Soelle!” He laid a hand over her swelling belly, perplexed when he felt a subtle kick.

Lethargically, lids fluttering, she opened her eyes. Daemen leaned over her so that his face would be the first thing should would see. “Were you reckless?” she whispered, slurring her words. A tangible sense of relief broke the tension in the room.

“Was that a rhetorical question?” Overwhelmed, Daemen embraced her, holding her tightly against him, afraid that she might dissipate like the shadow in the corridor. He nodded to Keets, as Avari and Leshaa helped move the injured Nuru into the corridor for evacuation.

“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” she said.

“I think I have.”

Soelle went rigid with fear. He once made the mistake of telling her about his visions and the manifestations of the dark side. The stories had frightened her so badly that she wouldn’t leave his side for a week. Not for her protection, but for his. “Why do you have that look on your face? The one you get when you’re not tell me something.”

“What does _ulm_ mean?” he asked, stroking her cheek with his thumb.

“It’s Socorran.” Confused, she stared up at him. “An informal address of _ulmtas.”_

“ _Meaning_?”

“Father.”

_Raeth_? Laughing joyously, Daemen glanced down at the remains of Dola-Brun’s ruined blaster. _Like father, like son._ Putting the trophy in Soelle’s lap, he bundled her in the thermal blanket and playfully scooped her up in his arms.

“Daemen, what are you doing?” She laughed, throwing her arms around his neck.

“Appreciating what I have,” he replied with a smirk, “and planning to kill anyone who dares to take it from me.”


End file.
